'Our Voting Group Has Failed,' Says Nominating Committee Chairman

Question: Who is on the voting committee and what is their background, when two artists with multiple number one songs -- music icons more than a decade -- in Disco Queen 'Donna Summer' and the hit making Disco Group 'Chic', are snubbed by the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame members?

Story by Billboard
Written by Marc Schneider
Photo by Getty Images

It's a topic that's hard to avoid when discussing the achievements of Donna Summer, who died Thursday of cancer: Why is the legendary singer not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

Longtime member Elton John weighed in almost immediately following the singer's death, calling the snub "a total disgrace." Now, the person in charge of nominations to the Cleveland-based Hall has issued a blunt statement, blaming voters for the "error."

"There is absolutely no doubt that the extraordinary Donna Summer belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame," Jon Landau, the chairman of the nominating committee, told the New York Times. "Regrettably, despite being nominated on a number of occasions, our voting group has failed to recognize her -- an error I can only hope is finally and permanently rectified next year."

Summer was nominated for this years's class, but was passed over. Inductees included Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Faces, Guns N' Roses and The Beastie Boys.

The issue with voters could very well be the genre of music Summer is most associated with, disco, which has a quiet presence in the museum. A scan of members reveals only two groups that could be categorized as "disco," The Bee Gees (1997) and ABBA (2010) -- however, both have diverse pop portfolios, much like Summer, who thrived in dance-pop and rock after disco fizzled out in the late-1970s.

Landau is correct in saying Summer "belongs" in the Hall, in terms of popularity, having earned 32 hit singles on the Billboard Hot 100 in her career, with 14 of those reaching the top 10. Her biggest singles include her four No. 1s "MacArthur Park," "Hot Stuff," "Bad Girls" and "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)" with Barbra Streisand. In 1983 she returned to the Hot 100's top 10 with the No. 3 anthem "She Works Hard For the Money."

Other members of the Hall dabbled in disco during their careers, particularly Rod Stewart ("Do Ya Think I'm Sexy"), The Supremes ("I'm Gonna Let My Heard Do the Walking"), The Jackson 5 (as The Jacksons) and The Rolling Stones ("Miss You"), among others.

One dance group that many believe should join Summer soon is Chic, the Nile Rodgers-led band behind hits like "Le Freak" and "Good Times." They've been nominated for inclusion seven times since 2003.

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The group recorded a demo of "Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)" but couldn't get any label interested in it. Finally Buddah Records released the 12" single and the success made Atlantic Records sign them in the late 1977 and re-release the single, which sold a million copies in its first month.

This first single is also the most important in Nile's opinion - as this was actually the first song with so called sub-bass.

Before "Dance, dance, dance" all bass below 60 Hz had been removed in the mastering process, but in this song Nile and Bernard decided to keep all of it. So this was the first song in which you could hear and feel the speakers in a club rumble with every bass-beat. This was really something completely new and avant garde at this time...

The huge success of the single led to their first album - Chic (1977).

From disco-disco.com, Nile Rodgers talks about Chic's beginning following decent success as a New York bank called 'The Apple Band', later featured with the "Walter Murphy and The Apple Band" and their big disco hit 'Fifth of Beethoven': "The first song we wrote was 'Everybody Dance' and it was the perfect Chic kind of song. The chord changes were real sophisticated, very jazzy, the bass playing was phenomenal, the groove infectious, and we used to play this record over and over again at this black after-work club in New York. Our song, 'Everybody Dance' became one of the hottest cuts in New York but no one could buy it because we just recorded it in our little studio. We realized that the people who were dancing to our music had a certain look. They were all wearing suits and the girls were fine and made up. We looked at them and it was like, 'Damn, what if we looked like that?' 

'Everybody Dance' was pumping in this club for three or four months. At the time Bernard and I were still musicians, working with other people. We would go to this club every night and see the black urban professionals dancing to our music and we decided 'What if we started to look like the people who were relating to our music?' That's how we came up with the idea for Chic. We didn't have any name, we were just doing music. When we looked at the people we said, 'Damn, there's the concept right in front of our faces?'
http://www.disco-disco.com/tributes/chic.shtml